May 2017: Modeling causal dependencies in formal semantics

Causal dependencies play a large role in the interpretation of natural language sentences. This has been recognized for a long time, but until fairly recently, it was not directly reflected in the practice of linguistic semanticists. Only since the mid-2000s, pioneering researchers (Schulz, 2007, 2001; Kaufman 2013, a.o.) have proposed models that explicitly represent those dependencies. At first, the main concern of these theorists has been the semantics and interpretation of conditional sentences.

This workshop showcases ongoing work(-in-progress) on the representation of causal dependencies in the context of formal semantics, bringing together a recognized expert on the topic and a number of young researchers at the University of Konstanz.